There was never any doubt Gaddafi was brutal; he was a secular authoritarian leader who ruled Libya with an iron fist. There were complaints about the general well-being of Libyans and the stagnating economy, but overall, Libya was an island of stability especially when compared to countries in and around that state. Libya, was, although, one of the primary rogue states during the 1980s and 1990s. The fate of Saddam Hussein also made him realize he needed the reconsider his hostile approach to the West. As such, Gaddafi gave up his nuclear weapons program and assisted intackling jihadists and intelligence cooperation. Gaddafi’s human rights record was horrifying, but qualitatively no different than other allies like Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan. One had to tolerate his rambling, mind-numbing rants in the United Nations, to be certain—but Libya was crucial in securing an entire borderline between the continent of Africa and Europe. Then, a small group of radicals supported by Islamist elements from around the world— including by U.S. allies Qatar and Saudi Arabia — waged a brutal, sectarian, and tribalistic campaign against the state.

The Obama administration was still fresh and optimistic after the Egyptian protests and toppling of Hosni Mubarak. Washington joined with a number of NATO and European allies to enforce the United Nations Security Council Resolution-imposed ceasefire and support the growing anti-Gaddafi forces on the ground. Regardless of the intentions of the coalition, the Libyan intervention resulted in the death of Gaddafi and sparked widespread instability. The civil war that followed rages on to this day, and Libya is now a battleground for rival Islamist forces. The world watches the humanitarian disaster in horror, and migrants flee unguarded coastlines to risk their lives crossing the Mediterranean to Europe.

The Libya intervention was arguably the first test for the Obama administration’s “reset” with Russia, announced in 2009. The reset had thawed relations and led to the American downsizing of planned missile defenses in Eastern Europe, a move applauded by Russia. As a result, Russia also stood down and refrained from vetoing the U.N. Security Council Resolution authorizing the mission to protect civilians from Gaddafi. The mission morphed into regime change, which worsened the siege mentality of Kremlin, as evidenced by Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov’s caustic remarks about avoiding Syria turning into another Libya. Further, there are structural arguments that the Libyan intervention influenced Moscow and even Beijing about how modern statecraft would be conducted. In this argument, the realist “might is right” principle was then reflected in further Russian behavior in Eastern Europe and even in Syria.

In carrying out the Libya intervention, President Obama clarified once and for all that he is a Wilsonian idealist at the end of the day. He is not a realist, not that there were any last remnants of doubt. There were other ways of dealing with civil wars in the Middle East and North Africa, reflecting different grand strategies of area containment. Obama arguably learned the wrong lessons from his administration’s misadventure. If these lessons are internalized, future U.S. presidents and policymakers might quite possibly continue to commit the same mistakes, over and over againwhen it comes to intervening in Middle East, thereby jeopardizing relations with other powers.

Sumantra Maitra is a doctoral researcher at the University of Nottingham, UK. His research is on Russian foreign policy and neorealism. He can be found on Twitter @MrMaitra.